Friendship circles, whose members identify one another as mutually connected.

Term

Deviance

Definition

Any behavior, belief, or condition that violates significant social norms in the society or group which it occurs.

Term

Crime

Definition

Behavior that violates criminal law and is punishable with fines, jail terms, and other sanctions

Term

Juvenile Delinquency

Definition

A violation of law or the commission of a status offense by young people.

Term

Social Control

Definition

Refers to the systematic practices that social groups develop in order to encourage conformity to norms, rules, and laws to discourage deviance.

Term

Criminology

Definition

The systematic study of crime and the criminal justice system, including the police, courts, and prisons.

Term

Anomie

Definition

A social condition in which people experience a sense of futility because social norms are weak, absent, or conflicting.

Term

What was Emile Durkheim's perspective on devianc (Functionalists)?

Definition

Believed that deviance was rooted in societal factors such as rapid social change and lack of social integration among people. Believed that the less social integration we had, the more deviance and crime. Deviance is a natural and inevitable thing.

Term

Strain Theory

Definition

Robert Merton's term for when people feel strain when they are exposed to cultural goals that they are unable to obtain because they do not have access to culturally approved means of achieving those goals.

Term

What are Merton's ways in which people adapt to cultural goals and approved ways of achieving them?

Definition

Conformity, innovation, retreatism, ritualism, and rebellion

Term

conformity

Definition

Merton. Occurs when people accept culturally approved goals and pursue them through approved means.

Term

innovation

Definition

Merton. occurs when people accept society's goals but adopt disapproved means of achieving them. For example--theft and drug dealing.

Term

ritualism

Definition

Merton. occurs when people give up on societal goals but still adhere to the socially approved means of achieving them.

Term

Retreatism

Definition

Merton. occurs when people abandon both the approved goals and the approved mean of achieving them. for example -- skid-row alcoholics and drug addicts.

Term

Rebellion

Definition

Merton. occurs when people challenge both the approved goals and the approved meas for achieving them, and advocate an alternative set of goals or means. violence.

Term

Illegitimate Opportunity Structures

Definition

Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin -- Circumstances that provide an opportunity for people to acquire through illegitimate activities what they cannot achieve through legitimate channels.

Term

Criminal Gang

Definition

devoted to theft, extortion, and other illegal means of securing an income.

Term

Conflict Gang

Definition

emerge in communities that do not provide either legitimate or illegitimate opportunities.

Term

Retreatist Gangs

Definition

unable to gain success through legitimate means and are unwilling to do so through illegal ones.

Term

Social Dynamite

Definition

Persons who have been marginalized.

Term

Social Junk

Definition

Members of stigmatized groups.

Term

Differential Association Theory

Definition

States that people have a greater tendency to deviate from societal norms when they frequently associate with individuals who are more favorable toward deviance than conformity.

Term

Differential Reinforcement Theory

Definition

Suggests that both deviant behavior and conventional behavior are learned through the same social processes.

Term

Rational Choice Theory of Deviance

Definition

Deviant behavior occurs when a person weighs the costs and benefits of nonconventional or criminal behavior and determines that the benefits will outweigh the risks involved in such actions.

Term

Social Bond Theory

Definition

The proposition that the probability of deviant behavior increases when a person's ties to society are weakened or broken.

Term

Labeling Theory

Definition

THe proposition that deviants are those people who have been successfully labeled as such by others.

Term

Primary Deviance

Definition

refers to the initial act of rule breaking.

Term

Secondary Deviance

Definition

OCcurs when a person who has been labeled a deviant accepts that new identity and continues the deviant behavior.

Term

Tertiary Deviance

Definition

Occurs when a person who has been labeled a deviant seeks to normalize the behavior by relabeling it as nondeviant.

Term

Felony

Definition

Major crime such as rape, homicide, or aggravated assault.

Term

Misdemeanor

Definition

Minor crime that is typically punished by less than one year in jail.

Term

Violent Crime

Definition

Consists of actions-murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault-involving force or the threat of force against others.